Cryptocurrency Crimes Discussed in the Black Hat Conference

This Wednesday brought along a lot of information regarding the cons of rise of cryptocurrency. The Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas studied the shortcomings of growing popularity of digital currency in the world. The prime topic of discussion remained, the ‘escalating opportunities for cyber-criminals to steal’.

The Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, is an annual event, wherein more than 15000 professionals from all over the globe, dealing with cybersecurity issues, gather to discuss the latest perils of the digital world, that could help them design the products required to counter them. They represent nearly 300 of the top cybersecurity firms.

One such organisation named Cisco plays an active role in the ongoing six-day conference. According to Cisco Systems, the world will have to deal with more and more cyber thefts, as and when the crypto radar expands.

According to the beliefs of the Cisco officials, the two major and newly devised techniques, crypto-phishing and crypto-jacking, are being frequently used in the present times. Crypto-phishing is a technique, wherein, the cyberpunks create fake websites or emails that possess a strong resemblance to the original and trusted crypto-firms. On the other hand, crypto-jacking involves gaining control over the users’ computer system with an intention to mine digital tokens.

As per the claims of Cisco’s threat analyst researcher, Austin McBride, “It ebbs and flows, if the (cryptocurrency) market is down, phishing is going to go up. They will grow together but at different rates.”

Also, he mentions that the cyberpunks are dedicated to attack the less popular cryptocurrencies, which are termed as altcoins, for the purpose of carrying out spiteful activities such as pump and dump.

In case of pump and dump, the hacker surges the price of altcoins by tens of thousands of percentage points and then interchanges it for a leading crypto token such as Bitcoin, prior to its collapse.

Additionally, it has been analysed that the smaller firms or startups are more likely to fall for the traps of these cyberpunks, owing to the lack of resources to build strong cybersecurity protections.

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